As I sit in my lounge room on a cold Saturday evening surrounded by friends, family and great sport, I am reminded that although the teams we support are based in the major cities, a lot of our talented athletes come from the country. Why are we not embracing this more?
Let’s take the National Rugby League, for example. They have a round to celebrate almost everything. Women in league, our Aboriginal heritage, the league’s heritage – they even have a round for superheroes. Yet we don’t have a weekend to showcase the great footy coming out of the bush.
I’m not going to write up a whole heap of stats about the amount of country rugby league players or the championships they have won; I just want to state the obvious. The bush has talent.
There has been a turf war along the eastern states for over a decade between the AFL, NRL and soccer. They are competing for the love, affection and skills of the young kids coming through the school systems.
The problem I have with this is the lack of professional games being played in the bush. The NRL has taken a few games to Mudgee in recent years, but why not have a whole round of games?
Here is my plan. All eight games from a certain round are played in country towns – say, Wagga, Griffith, Dubbo, Mudgee, Tamworth, Roma, Bendigo and Cairns. You can rotate it around every year.
(Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
I understand some of the towns or venues won’t hold 10,000 fans, but they struggle to get those numbers at a game in Sydney on a good Saturday night.
Send the two teams to town on a Thursday. They can do training camps at schools, shopping centre and hospital visits. Really milk it for all it’s worth. Just seeing some of their favourite players will encourage young kids to play league over any other sport.
On game day you play a local game or two as the curtain raiser to the main event. There will be fans lining up for days to get to see professional talent.
This will benefit the town, the teams and the young kids. It seems an easy decision to me. The only reason I can see it not working is the same reason the NRL always gives: money.
There isn’t enough money to play games in the bush. Surely a ground bursting with 10,000 fans is better than an empty Cbus Stadium on the Gold Coast every single weekend.
Why is the league not looking into this more? They have dropped the City vs Country concept from the calendar. Yes, I know that wasn’t working at all and it had to go.
Surely, I am not the only one that thinks this is a fantastic idea?
Spinksy
Roar Guru
Solid ideas fellas. Lets hope the people in charge take note and make this happen.
Rob
Guest
The AFL plays pre-season games in rural areas and the benefit for the team based in the town that hosts has in the past been amazing. A few years ago Yea had their main oval re-turfed and new drainage put in so they could host the game. Others have received new lighting for broascasts, new change rooms etc - not to mention the crowds that turn up and spend money in the bar etc boost the bank balance a bit which helps clubs that are struggling... NRL should definatly do this - everyone benefits...
Justin Kearney
Guest
Absolute rubbish Gen Rose. There isn’t one club averaging less than 10000.
Alexander Clough
Roar Pro
Isn't this already happening? We've already seen games in Toowoomba, Gladstone, Tamworth, Gosford (admittedly not that country), Bathurst, and Mudgee - with more to come (Darwin definitely has a game). And that's before we get into the wilderness of matches in Perth. Admittedly some of that was due to the Commonwealth Games but I believe the NRL have already realised they're onto a good thing and that 9000 in Mudgee looks better than 12000 in Homebush, even if they make far more money at ANZ. It's probably not feasible to do a whole round in the country due to limited resources and establishment costs but one game every couple of rounds seems to be doing the trick. Maybe the next step is to go outside traditional rugby league heartlands and take games into regional Victoria, WA, and other parts of NZ.
Gen Rose
Roar Rookie
How is that false? Without the Brisbane Broncos the NRL would be averaging the 8k crowds. I know you dont like hearing it but its the truth
kk
Guest
You should be at HQ, Riley
Birdy
Guest
We sat on the hill, everything was fun and never serious. But the fact is ,country deserve more games. If it wasn't for the Amco cup , they would have never seen nswrl matches. Re Soo I watched the first game at Dapto leagues club. It was choc a block with TVs everywhere. Everyone was going for Qld.
Macho
Guest
My memory of the games was that the City folk barracked for the country lads but maybe that was in a more pleasant time
Birdy
Guest
Back in my younger days we used to travel up to Sydney to watch the city country games. Every year country would compete for 60 minutes then get trampelled. Every year the Sydney crowd would boo and heckle us. Every year we would look at the program an see 15 country players in the country side and at least 8 or 9 country players in the city side . When Qld noticed , they started Soo. The country deserves better, at least 1 game per round would be fair. Also, I read the other day the WA gov are now planning a major city to be built in WA within 50 years to support population growth. If only the NRL had some vision for the future.
Steve M
Guest
Why not have a town/region for every club to conect with. Play at least one game there a year to have a long term connection with the area. That’s at least 16 games in bush/regional areas. And while I’m on that, play the 6pm Friday game there so less issues with travel times for the folk that work in the middle of Sydney and can’t get to other parts of Sydney by 6pm. The other 6pm games can be played in Auckland (local 8pm). That shouldn’t leave many other games for Sydney at 6pm.
Riley Pettigrew
Roar Guru
Definitely something that should happen, it's better than playing a whole round of football in Brisbane. I wasn't against the idea of a Magic Weekend but if the NRL were going to do it, it had to be in Perth, Adelaide or Melbourne. Every Sydney club at least should play one game a year in the regions. Something I would like to see much more of from the NRL and clubs is community engagement. It would be awesome to cover all of NSW and QLD schools (and expand it to other states as well). Let me crunch some numbers here. You have over 500 ambassadors (30 from each NRL club, 40 Jillaroos and ~20-30 past players working as NRL ambassadors). In groups of two at a rate of 6 schools in five days (half-day sessions plus the odd clinic) then you would be able to cover EVERY school in the NSW/ACT top-to-tail in 2 weeks. 3.5 weeks if you include QLD/NT. That includes both primary and secondary, and everything - private, all boys/girls, religious, alternative, etc. Of course, you're not going to be able to visit every school but think about the impact you're going to mate just by dedicating a couple of weeks in the pre-season for community workshops, even if you just limit it to primary schools. A costly exercise I know, but a valuable one which will give the NRL an even greater profile in community engagement. Start building a program now with the goal to reach 90% of NSW/ACT/QLD primary schools annually by ~2021. Then expand to New Zealand, PNG, Victoria, NT, WA. Work with state/federal governments to make it happen. Government pitches in X dollars and the NRL/community program sponsor chips in the rest. It's the NRL's answer to Healthy Harold.
Pomoz
Roar Rookie
Well Gus Gould has the Panthers already doing that for the last few years. Every year we host a home game in Bathurst. I agree, more teams should do it and a 'country round' makes sense.
Spinksy
Roar Guru
I still remember Simon Bonnetti bringing his Roosters side back to our home town of Griffith in the mid 90s. I was only a young tacker and loved the experience. It didnt make me a Roosters fan, but made me realise you can be whatever you want to be, even from a small town. NSW cricket side come around the same time. This started my love affair with a man named Richard Chee Quee.
Paul
Roar Guru
The idea certainly has merit and if the NRL is serious, they'd look into it. At some point, there has to be some giving from the NRL back to the places where so many great footballers have come from and this means probably wearing a financial loss for that round. Hopefully that would be offset by increased interest and more youngsters taking up the game instead of playing soccer or Aussie Rules
Shan Bowman
Guest
Good concept mr Spinks. What about if each club took one game a year to the bush?
i miss the force
Guest
I understand some of the towns or venues won’t hold 10,000 fans, but they struggle to get those numbers at a game in Sydney on a good Saturday night - this is false i like the idea but check with fox and channel 9 if they are able to get to 8 country venues in a round